Shiikhaal

“What I have done in the past is history, what I am going to do in the future is a mystery.”− Mike Tyson.

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The great Somali poet Abdullahi Suldan Timacadde said, “Clannism provides no shelter; it only causes destruction.” That is only partially true. What is left unsaid is that members of one clan can go out of their way to help each other, and their common bond can bring some good things to the table.

Like a nice free meal in a top-rated eatery.

Did you hear that?

OK, let me first indulge in an exercise of name-dropping.

You know Attorney Abdurahman Hosh Jibril, former Somali Minister of Constitution, Federal Affairs, and Reconciliation? He is a longtime friend, but this Hosh guy told me in 2010, after reading my Mogadishu Memoir, that he always thought I was Shiikhaal. Hosh was not the only one who believed that; many of my friends thought so even though I never claimed to be Shiikhaal.

How did it happen that so many people thought I was Shiikhaal when they never heard me say so?

That is simple—not through Facebook or Twitter but through the old fashioned way: word of mouth.

I miss those good old days though because I innocently and unwittingly received certain tangible benefits. I was received well in certain Shiikhaal corners and was even well-fed under the impression I was one of them. Unfortunately, the truth has an unceremonious way of exposing itself.

Get that imposter. He is Digil. He was born in Afgooye. Get him.

Now that many of my friends know who I am, I get no free meals.

Once, a young wife of Warlord Hussein Mohamed Farah Aidid extolled my virtues and gave my colleague (Habar Gidir-Cayr) and me a powerful motivational speech. My colleague and I were running a nonprofit foundation that received government grants to serve Somali refugees.  “Keep on the good job, boys,” she told us. My colleague, who did not correct her, kept on doing what he was doing. He was probably basking in her praise and forgot about me and my Shiikhaal-ness. For me, my jaw dropped. I did not, oddly, correct her. Of course, someone must have told the young woman that I was Shiikhaal.

At any rate, let me go back to my days as a ‘Shiikhaal.’

The first time I realized I was suspected as a Shiikhaal was in 1979 while in Cairo.  I was working for Somali Airlines. A young Shiikhaal man whom I barely knew invited me to lunch. He took me to a fancy restaurant in downtown Cairo that tourists frequented. The meal was elaborate and delicious, and it lasted about an hour and half. Dessert and tea followed.

Then, my host started talking seriously as though he were preparing to make an official announcement.

“OK, Hassan, so what is your sub-clan?”

“Sub-clan of what?”

 “You are a Shiikhaal, aren’t you?”

“Shiikhaal?”

I rolled my eyes in bewilderment searching for words, but unfortunately none was forthcoming. I had no escape! It was not the time to weave and wind around the truth. I immediately figured the source of the problem. It was my turn to become serious and address the issue head-on.

I told the young man that I had good news and bad news.

“Go ahead.”

“The good news is; I really enjoyed and loved the food. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the best meals I ever had,” I said.

The young man nodded in approval.

“But the bad news is—are you ready for this? − I am not Shiikhaal.”

“What?

“No, I am not.”

Then, the young man raised a resonant, logical question.

“OK, but aren’t you the brother-in-law of so and so [he mentioned the name of a government official in the Barre regime]?  “

“Yes, I am,” I replied.

“So, what is the problem? “, he asked.

“What problem?” I retorted.

Then, I had to clarify the matter.

“Again, I have good news and bad news.”

“Now, what is it?”

“Well, yes, I am indeed the in-law of that official all right, but the bad news, to you my friend, is I am the brother of the “Bahda Yar” (“the younger wife”).

The first wife is incidentally Shiikhaal. The couple has since divorced.

Initially, I thought the man took the ‘bad’ news in stride, but I was wrong. He appeared perplexed, and then he mumbled something inaudibly. I thought he was secretly wailing a string of expletives in my direction. Perhaps, what he really wanted to say was, “You miserable creature, you wasted all the money I had spent on this sumptuous lunch, and you are not even freaking Shiikhaal. Just go.”

To alleviate the financial toll I had inflicted on this good-natured man, I offered to give him money to defray the cost of the meal, but he politely declined.

Somehow, I realized the futility of placing too much emphasis on clan affiliation. Look at this tortured soul. Minutes earlier, he had been happy, gregarious, and engaging and now he was huffing and puffing.

I hate clannism and its pernicious ways!

This kind of story could have had a bad ending in which the two people concerned would go to their separate ways when they found they were from different clans. But, the story had a happy ending. Oddly, after that incident, the young man and I became good friends.  Both of us, in a way, felt guilty in using the concept of clan as a convenience to produce an elusive favorable outcome. To him, it was an alluring prospect having a fellow “Shiikhaal” in the branch of Somali Airlines in Egypt. I could help him transmit news and packages from his family in Somalia without going through aviation red tape. At the restaurant, I was unaware of his good intentions and, shall I say, his grand design. But still I willing benefited from his largesse.

Now that I have been fully exposed, can I still get another cup of tea, please? My throat is parched.

On one trip to Mogadishu, the young man asked me to meet his father and retrieve for him all his educational documents. I did. Both the father and the young man were grateful for this small favor.

Afterward, the young man and I realized that our newfound friendship was more important and stronger than our supposedly ‘mutual’ clan membership. It was a small emotional victory that we savored, but a victory nonetheless.

Then, one day, the young man added a twist to our friendship when he introduced me in front of his kith and kin as his brother.

Now, that was touching.

I guess Poet Timacadde rested his case.

 

 

 

An Al-Shabab Leader Says Hammami is Alive

Shaikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, one of the leaders of Al-Shabab, confirmed that the American jihadist, Omar Hammami, is still alive.

In an interview with Somali Channel TV on May 16, Aweys stated that Hammami was wounded and on the run. He lashed out at an unnamed senior Al-Shabab leader for going after the American fighter whom Aweys said had done nothing wrong “but expressed his [critical] views.”

Last March, 2012, Hammami appeared on the internet claiming that Al-Shabab militants were trying to kill him because he disagreed with the group regarding the application of sharia, strategy, and the course of jihad in Somalia.

The Al-Shabab leaders were not pleased with Hammami’s public rants. After several months of tolerating what they called his “childish petulance,” the group lashed out at him and accused him of seeking fame at the expense of his fellow jihadists.

Aweys criticized the unnamed leader of Al-Shabab for following the tactics and teachings of Machiavelli instead of the Prophet Mohamed. He said, “Mistakes have been made in the movement by certain individual leaders who do not want to consult with others.”

Aweys’ statement is the first by a high-ranking Al-Shabab figure since April 25 when an Al-Shabab assassin tried to kill Hammami. Aweys also confirmed that some Al-Shabab leaders have complained to Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda supreme leader, about the wrong course of jihad in Somalia.

In 2001, Aweys was added to the United States government’s list of terrorists.  He was the former leader of the Union of Islamic Courts which controlled Mogadishu in 2006. In 2009, he formed Hizbul Islam to fight against the African Union forces (AMISOM) and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. A year later, Aweys and his group formally joined Al-Shabab.

The Al-Shabab Implosion: Featuring Foreign Jihadists

Several years ago, Somalia’s Al-Qaeda affiliate, Al-Shabab, was the first jihadi group to use Twitter to transmit its messages. These days, it is on that same social networking medium that the group’s dirty laundry is being aired.

In a span of three weeks in April, Ibrahim Al-Afghani, one of the top leaders of Al-Shabab and a veteran of the jihad in Afghanistan, wrote a scathing open letter to Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of Al-Qaeda, in which he assailed Ahmed Abdi Godane (also known as Mokhtar Abu Zubeir) — the emir of Al-Shabab—for his imperious style of leadership. The letter unwittingly set off a dizzying chain of events. On April 25, there was an assassination attempt on the American jihadist Omar Hammami. Four days later, an influential foreign jihadist of Al-Shabab wrote an open letter upbraiding the emir of Al-Shabab for committing a long list of egregious acts against foreign fighters in Somalia. That same day, a special court of Al-Shabab presided over by Mukhtar Robow, Ibrahim Al-Afghani, and Hassan Dahir Aweys issued a fatwa, a religious edict, ruling that the killing of Omar Hammami and his colleagues is impermissible.

Omar Hammami, born and raised in Alabama, went to Somalia in 2006 when the Union of Islamic Courts was in control of Mogadishu. After the courts were expelled by Ethiopian troops, he joined Al-Shabab and became one of its leaders. Until a year ago, he was a member of the group’s Shura Council, the highest decision-making body. For several years, Hammami was running on all cylinders: He was the face of Al-Shabab on the internet calling for foreign jihadists to come to Somalia and join the fight, issuing Twitter messages, aiming threats and bluster against the U.S. and Somali governments, composing and singing jihadi rap songs and publicly appearing with local jihadist leaders. In one of his videos, he pleaded, “If you can encourage more of your children, and more of your neighbors, and anyone around you to send people….to this jihad, it would be a great asset for us.” It was apparent that Hammami, the hip-hop jihadist, was naturally inclined to seek the spotlight and constantly angling to get even more attention. According to Hammami’s Twitter messages, he had a falling out with Godane and the duo’s once friendly relationship went from frosty to hostile. Godane and Hammami are two militants who have the same worldview when it comes to global jihad. However, where they differ most, according to Hammami, are the application of sharia, strategy and the treatment of foreign jihadists in Somalia. Hammami has also been critical of the lavish lifestyle some Al-Shabab leaders lead with the taxes that the group imposes on people under its control.

Last year, Hammami went into hiding and started making appearances on the internet appealing for help. He said Al-Shabab leaders were trying to kill him because he had complained about the group’s singular focus on local jihad rather than global jihad. He declared that the threat of his extermination was real and imminent. He has since been emitting a series of fiery denunciations of Al-Shabab and its mercurial leader, Godane. In a way, Hammami has become fixated with the emir of Al-Shabab and is dedicated to smearing him at every opportunity. He accused Godane of all kinds of crimes, from ruling the terrorist outfit with an iron hand to being behind the killing of Fazul Abdullah Mohamed. Fazul, Bin Laden’s representative in East Africa and the man responsible for the bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, was killed when he made a wrong turn to a check point manned by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces in Mogadishu. According to Hammami, Godane was the one who “misdirected” Fazul to that fateful checkpoint.

Initially, Al-Shabab leaders issued no response as they read and watched Hammami’s rants with a mixture of irritation and embarrassment. It is not an everyday event that an American jihadist, who had ascended to the corridors of power in an African group, publicly rebukes his hosts. However, after nine months of silence, Al-Shabab reprimanded Hammami and accused him of obstinacy and the shameless pursuit of fame. Furthermore, the terrorist group apologized to the Muslim community in general and all the jihadists in the world in particular for having “to witness such childish petulance in one of the theaters of jihad….frivolous ramblings and whimsical desires of those who wish to enhance their image at the price of jihad and the mujahidin, spreading discord and disunity in the process.”

Then, on January 4, 2013, Al Shabab asked Hammami to turn himself in no later than January 19. For many, it would have been a walk-away point, but Hammami did not immediately heed the group’s request and continued his criticism of Godane and Al-Shabab. He had developed a special relationship with some American and Canadian counterterrorism experts who were eager to hear from him, and in some cases even interview him. As a man on whose head the U.S. placed a $5 million bounty, Hammami at times revealed crucial information about the leadership dynamics of Al-Shabab, his background, and even that he was in the Bay and Bakool region. These bloggers became his lifeline to transmit his views, and some even showed no qualms about rooting for the safety of the wanted jihadist.

Hammami felt that his life was in danger. His instincts were not far off. On Thursday, April 25, he, an Egyptian and a British jihadist were sipping tea in a café in a small village in the Bay and Bakool region when an Al Shabab assassin shot Hammami in the neck. Hammami tweeted saying, “just been shot in [the] neck by Shabab assassin. [But the injury is] not critical yet.” He went on to acknowledge that Al-Shabab fighters were coming from “multiple directions” and that his friends were few and they were waiting for back up forces. Hammami accused Godane of being behind the attempted assassination, declaring that, “Abu Zubeir (Godane) has gone mad,” because “he is starting a civil war.” It was an interesting choice of words —“civil war”— in a jihadi group. Without missing a beat, he continued: “Their goal is to kill us regardless of reason.” Then, he acted as a tough guy determined not to wilt under attack when he posted images of his wounds.

The Al-Shabab fighters, Hammami wrote, raided the houses of his supporters and apparently uncovered condoms, alcohol and documents. He accused the militant group of planting these materials. To add more insult to this injury, Hammami accused Al-Shabab fighters of moral turpitude. “They have started harassing our wives,” he lamented.

On April 30, a foreign jihadist who did not reveal his name but is a member of Al Shabab’s Shura Council and who once chaired a special court that mediated between Al-Shabab leaders (Godane, Robow, Al-Afghani, and Shangole) wrote a carefully crafted open letter to Godane which made its way to jihadi websites. The letter, according to its author, was posted online because he had tried to meet with Godane to personally address the chronic problems the radical group is facing. Unfortunately, he said, he was rebuffed. Then, he went to a mosque where Al-Shabab leaders were present and gave an impromptu speech preaching to the leaders but was silenced and even banned from the mosque. “You [Godane] did not leave me any other choice except to keep silent while seeing the miserable situation of the mujahidin and Muslims. That is not acceptable in sharia,” he wrote. The writer stated that he wanted all jihadists in the world to know about the crises of jihad in Somalia. The writer personally addressed grievances to Godane as follows:

1. You have inculcated an environment that any foreign jihadist who leaves Somalia without permission is deemed an infidel.

2. You have failed to meet foreign jihadists for several years and you never inquire about their conditions.

3. You have arrested some foreign fighters without any charge and not allowed their families to visit them or know their whereabouts. You have prevented some fighters from waging jihad, the very reason they had traveled to Somalia. In essence, “You have banished some to the lands of infidels while you are hunting down the others.”

4. You have done nothing when Al-Shabab security officials raped the wives of some foreign jihadists while the latter were on the front lines.

5. Some foreign jihadists died in your secret detention centers and you failed to punish those behind these crimes.

The case of foreign jihadists in Somalia like Hammami is veering from tragedy to farce. The prevalent narrative is filled with accusations of power grabs, conspiracy, assassination attempts, jealousy, betrayal, dashed hopes, sexual innuendo, and—last and most damning—rape. The foreign jihadists, moreover, are fighting on two fronts. The first is against the Somali government and AMISOM forces. The second is against their fellow jihadists spearheaded by Godane. Hammami, who once provided the template for Al-Shabab’s recruitment to bloom in the West, is now a case study in effective counterterrorism. He has become a good example of a misguided and dangerous young man who left home in Alabama to become a jihadist in a faraway land only to be hunted down by the very people who were once his comrades in arms. It is a lesson of the bloody fate that awaits would-be foreign jihadists if they come to Somalia. The message is clear to these young jihadists in the West seeking martyrdom: You are more likely to be killed by your fellow jihadists than a hovering American drone in the skies of Africa. Hammami, whose fairy tale of martyrdom has come crashing down, is aware that he did not sign up for the mess he is currently in.

Rumblings of trouble have been brewing in Al-Shabab for some time. Paradoxically, the jihadi situation in Somalia does not draw a dichotomy between foreign fighters and local jihadists. Interestingly, the latter group has become a pawn to the power struggle among Al-Shabab leadership. For instance, Hammami has the backing of two local jihadist leaders (Robow and Hassan Dahir Aweys) and global jihadists like Ibrahim Al-Afghani. The biggest source of conflict among Al-Shabab leaders seems to stem from Godane, whose leadership style is a noxious cocktail of incompetence, manipulation, and repression. Among hard-core criminal jihadist leaders, Godane has been described as an inflexible leader with an extra proclivity for violence. What compounds Al-Shabab’s staggering problems is its loss of sources of revenue due to its loss of territory, the military progress of AMISOM and Somali government troops, the constant bickering over the smallest things, and the lack of vast territory in which to maneuver. In essence, Al-Shabab fighters are geographically surrounded in all directions. Nevertheless, many observers’ premise was wrong regarding Al-Shabab’s imminent demise. Despite the chronic discord among its leaders, not a single high-ranking figure of the terrorist group has defected from its ranks. Like an animal cornered, these leaders are all intractably interwoven. They have risen as a group and will go down as a group.

On April 5, 2009, Hammami issued a video in which he articulated his reasons for going to Somalia: “The only reason we are staying here, away from our families, away from the cities, away from candy bars [and] all these other things is because we are waiting to meet with the enemy.” While jihadism is a career that creates enemies, it is now creating in Somalia the wrong enemy: the one within. As the classic Walt Kelly Pogo cartoon read, “We have found the enemy and he is us.”